A descriptive study of schools that offer supplemental online courses in high school and the students that take them
Abstract: While there is landscape information about specific states and regions, there are few national estimates of the number of high school students taking supplemental online courses for credit. Further, there is a lack of information about the characteristics of schools that offer these courses and the characteristics of the students who take them for credit. This study fills this gap in the literature by providing information gathered through the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) school and student questionnaires. The findings indicate that the majority of schools offered online courses in 2015 with 63% of schools offering online courses in mathematics and 69% offering online English or language arts courses. Further, 12% of 12th grade students took an online mathematics course for credit and 19% took an online English course for credit. This brief paper presentation will focus on the important differences in the characteristics of students who took and did not take an online course. The findings suggest that it is critical for schools to have appropriate support structures for students enrolled in online courses and that teacher preparation programs consider the training that they are providing to prospective teachers about how to teach online courses in these subjects.